


End of Days

by Zanne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-08
Updated: 2011-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-19 21:49:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zanne/pseuds/Zanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Apocalypse was only a story. They got it wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of Days

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://gestaltrose.livejournal.com/profile)[**gestaltrose**](http://gestaltrose.livejournal.com/)   for beta-ing! Kripke owns all.

  
The Apocalypse was only a story.

Some believed it to be true – a literal telling of events yet to come - while others believed it no more than some metaphorical tale intended to teach humanity temperance in all of their desires, a subtle warning against hubris. It was a veiled threat of the future woven in storybook form, filled with beasts and horrors incomprehensible to the human mind.

It was said Four Horsemen would herald its coming, riding over the earth and bringing destruction in their wake. Once their course was set, none could deter them, their path entwined into Creation’s design from the very beginning. 

Religious scholars of every sect debated the time of their arrival, what signs would lead them, what they might look like, and what calamities would follow. They debated the existence of the imaginary for as long as man walked the earth.

All of the talk, all of the disagreement, all of the discord meant nothing, and Creation’s plan rolled on – the outcome known, but events proceeding never as expected despite all the hours, all the years, all the centuries devoted to its interpretation.

And they came, one by one - not in a sudden flurry of horseflesh, but in the soft cries and snuffling flesh of the weakest of Creation’s beings. The secret to the success of Creation’s plan – even its own delicately organized design of destruction – was the subtlety of it harbingers, their arrival unremarked and their purpose cleverly disguised by something other.

After all, the Apocalypse didn’t need to be a sudden end – one breath suddenly failing to lead the next; instead it could be a soft suffocation of the senses, a process taking decades to complete.

Famine came first, his arrival celebrated by only a few, but welcomed just the same. He wasn’t the skeletal specter most would expect, instead a chubby cheeked boy dusted with cinnamon freckles who grew to hunger that he could not have, and glutted himself on that he could take.

Famine was soon followed by Pestilence, just as inoffensive a creature as his elder brother, but designed by the darker side of Destiny as a plague on humanity. Contaminated by a creature of the Pit and left to grow into his power, his purpose was to bring an end to humanity’s rule at long last.

The years passed with no sign of the Others, giving Famine and Pestilence time to grow and to learn and to evolve.

Then the time came for Pestilence to fulfill his purpose, to lead the Demons from the Pit to infect all humans they crossed with their darkness. But Pestilence faltered, brought down by another who sought his throne.

Famine refused to sit back and let this be, bartering with Devils to bring his brother back home, to sit at his side where he belonged.

So War came to ride beside his brother, welcomed back to earth in his second life by a grateful Famine, who stubbornly denied any difference in the core of what he hungered for. Pestilence hadn’t failed in his greater purpose, the contagion freed to do as it would.

But War, filling Pestilence’s empty husk now that his job was complete, was more than willing to bring down the walls of Heaven and Hell to save Famine from his sacrifice.

War failed, as was destined, losing his beloved Famine to a foe greater than they had faced before. What power did they have, three-sided, a triangle balancing precariously upon its point?

None…and so Famine fell, dragged into the Pit to be lost forevermore.

And somewhere buried deep in the primordial hind-brain of the human gestalt, the world knew and rejoiced that the end that had been foretold was no longer a threat. For months… _four_ months…the very surety of their existence made the humans complacent, allowing the Darkness that had oozed free of Hell upon War’s birth to fester and spread across the globe – Pestilence’s final gift to his brothers, a soulless contagion capable of bringing down the holiest of men.

But then the silence fell, and all who knew enough to heed the signs held their breath and waited.

Death emerged from the Depths, clawing his way from the soil, reborn in Famine’s form – his only mission to destroy that which continued to deny him what he had once hungered for above everything.

So on a black horse they rode, and in their wake unfurled the End of Days. The Apocalypse nipped lovingly at the Horsemen's heels, hiding in their shadows while they continued to look ever forward for the cause of the world’s destruction.

And behind them, the world burned.

 


End file.
